


Crush

by orphan_account



Category: Hornblower RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-28
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:11:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christian is always getting a crush on the wrong sorts of people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush

It's a bit strange actually, because this has happened to Christian before. He used to have what he thought of as a nemesis in junior school. Her name was Jessica and together they were like repelling molecules because they hated each other from about the third year, when these things became important. They had an ongoing feud: once she kicked him in the knee, although she had been aiming for his nuts, and he clearly remembers putting glue in her hair when they were making paper bunnies for Easter; great globs of it and she'd cried, actually.

They kept it up for years, one small war building on another, even in secondary school. Christian thinks the glue incident was less, so much less than that afternoon in Mrs Harper's drama class - Jessica told her friends the mortifying story about the time Christian wet his pants and had to wear borrowed shorts all day. He'd only been six. All the girls stood around Jessica, twittering and preening, and Christian had gripped his copy of Marlowe until the spine bent back. And he must have been about sixteen, generally a confusing time, because sometime after they'd finished clapping hands over their mouths he'd looked over and abrupt heat had thumped into his body, into his cheeks and his chest and low, low down in his stomach because the girls always rolled up the waists of their skirts to make the hemlines higher, and he saw, suddenly, Jessica's long legs, her long, bare thighs. 

That was a furiously intimate battle tactic she hadn't even known about. Christian was quite defeated.

But Jessica never looked back. It was patently obvious she liked Jeremy, who (Christian would admit) had excellent hair and studs in his ears, three of them, dull silver. Jeremy smoked right outside the school gates for everyone to see.

After that, on days where Christian was feeling extra sorry for himself, he would sometimes imagine Jeremy putting his hand on Jessica's long pale thigh, sliding it beneath the hem of Jessica's skirt, and even though his fingers were nicotine-scented and bitten, because it was Jeremy, Jessica would like that.

Things were a bit mad then. Thinking of it now just doesn't have the same impact; Christian doesn't feel hot and agonised, just vaguely confused - until recently he thought he was past that sort of thing. 

So he's a bit confused, slightly restless. He's hot now because the sun is beating down on him; this whole place is like an oven and he's wearing his little blue coat which must be made out of about two hundred sheep. His script in his lap: it's Day Eighteen and they're in Menorca.

A bunch of extras are milling around near the crew, looking artfully dirty and honestly tired. The next shot is being set up as the tang of daylight hits the cameras and far-off sea, and here, of course, comes Paul McGann. He strolls past, sunglasses on, goes straight by Christian without even looking at him, as if he's a shrub growing at the side of the set. A shrub with a bad perm and a sunlit squint. _Fuck you, McGann_, Christian thinks hard, watching as McGann heads straight for the director and flirts a cup of coffee from some woman standing by, because those are the only people he's interested in: big names and women. Can't even get his own coffee.

Christian looks down and makes a few unnecessary notes in the margin of his page - his next three scenes are all planned out in his head, the smallest detail of what he will say and feel. He knows how to be professional, and he knows he shouldn't get all riled up over this, as inexplicable as it is. Cats and dogs, sweetheart, Karen from makeup had told him philosophically. The analogy wasn't quite right: he and McGann had never fought. Never scowled or spat at each other. They just didn't seem to get along, and apparently other people had noticed some tension.

This was what reminded Christian of Jessica. It was that feeling of coming face to face with a language you suspected might be nonsense, a bit like reading Shakespeare for the first time. It suggested that maybe there were some people in the world who just took an instant, irrational dislike to him. It was absurd.

He makes another note, doodles a little stick figure and tries to look at the situation objectively.

Fact 1. Paul McGann is a bitch.  
Fact 2. Paul McGann is second-fiddle to Gruffudd.  
Fact 3. Christian spent last night jerking off thinking about what would happen if his door was unlocked, and McGann walked in without knocking. 

In Christian's mind McGann just stood there and said absolutely nothing, not _keep going_ or _give a bloke some warning!_, just stood near the bed and stared at Christian lying there with his knees bent and his legs spread and the graceful feel of his cock against his palm. 

Christian had kept going anyway, pulling steadily, his thumb sweet on top, and it had been good. Nice, he thought, lying in the dim hotel room.

At some point in the fantasy McGann had stopped watching. He'd bent down over the bed and pushed his tongue out, wet and soft, and licked it slowly over Christian's nipple.

God. And, christ, he shouldn't be thinking of this while he's on set because, pretty clearly, the directions in the script say 'Young Hammond is intimidated', they do not say 'Young Hammond is intimidated _into having an erection_.' 

Christian turns a page and looks up in time to see McGann smiling - grinning - at one of the sound technicians. He's got the coffee in one hand, and with the other he's fiddling with the bright buttons on his jacket like he can't keep still. 

The thing is, it wouldn't be wildly out of character. In their scenes so far McGann's been all over him with his eyes and his words, his slow tongue, but that might just be McGann's inherent sleaze bleeding in where it shouldn't. Certainly it seems that Lieutenant Bush's distaste has been seeping through the other way, into McGann and into reality, Christian's reality. 

That really isn't the story Christian's looking for. And anyway, it's pretty clear that Jack Hammond is in a lasting, lost-in-the-woods kind of pain throughout the whole movie, and Christian's never been into pain. 

Yes, Jack Hammond might tremble under Bush's gaze and stumble over all those fine lines of pride and punishment, wanting and not wanting, but that's not Christian. That's not what he's about. He's just got a knack for getting a huge, pointless crush on the person that wants him least.


End file.
